Let it just sink in
by I'm A Cuckoo
Summary: James is waiting for a fanfare of sorts, maybe a few fireworks  and a parade . After all, he's just become a dad.


_Disclaimer: Anything you recognise is property of JK Rowling._

**Let it just sink in**

I don't feel it straight away.

The hours have passed by in a blur when they should have dawdled and she is slumped down low in the bed, itching and wriggling when she should have been dozing delicately. The Healers and the mediwitches interrupt indiscriminately and my mother just won't take the hint and Padfoot is sitting, stunned, in the corner. This is not what I had expected. But don't all new parents say that?

It was urgent and desperate and painful and _sterile_. One minute, Lily was groaning, her eyes clenched shut, her fists crunching the bedsheet, her hair coating her forehead. The next minute, Lily was gasping, her eyes pushing open against the wave of exhaustion, her hands pulling my arms nearer. And Harry was here.

He was furious about it. She was enamoured.

Lily knew straight away. He slipped into her arms as though he had always rested there. She draped a kiss onto his cheek as though it were commonplace. The Healers and mediwitches beamed, shook my hand, cradled her shoulder, rubbed his cheek. They all knew. They felt it.

Padfoot had bounded into the feeling, as per usual. He had raved on and on about how his godson had finally arrived (how could we not have already arranged our child's future when our child had parents with a knack for walking into disasters?) and picked him out of Lily's arms without invitation, hesitation.

'What do you think, Prongs? I doubt he'll be a stag. His mother will counterbalance all your arrogance after all. I reckon he'll be something infinitely more subtle than you.'

'And I reckon you should maybe wait for him to show some kind of magical talent before you start planning his Animagus form,' Lily had clucked quietly from the bed.

'Oh, shush, woman,' Padfoot had chided. 'Here,' he had added, passing Harry over to me. 'I have presents.'

Lily had laughed, Padfoot had bragged. I had stared down at the perfect little stranger that lay in my grasp. I knew that hair and those ears and the shape of those eyes. I could even recognise the beginning of a familiar cowlick that tickled his forehead.

I love him. I know that we are all tangled up now into one thing; he is so tiny and perhaps that's why I have accepted his presence so easily. But I don't feel it. And I don't know why not.

Mum takes the hint finally. Well. Not really – the Healer tells her to leave. Padfoot left an hour ago to bound into the feeling with Moony and Wormtail and now it is just us. No, not us. There's a new us. Us three rather than us two. And as I say this, I realise I like it. Lily does too. She curls a finger at me and I go, of course. I wriggle onto the bed and she wriggles into my side, and now Harry is wriggling too, his head is angling helplessly as though making sure I can see him without Lily's hair getting in the way. It is eight o' clock in the evening and this is the first time we have stopped in thirty hours. My chin sits on her head; her chin rests on my arm. We are ready to give up now and just get some sleep. Lily's blinks are longer and longer, the seconds stretch out.

His eyes open.

Hazy, unfocused; I am reminded of myself in the first startling moments of morning when the bedroom swirls at me like clouds in the wind.

'I think he needs glasses,' I tell Lily.

'James,' she laughs. A finger touches Harry's nose. It's mine.

'Hello you,' Lily greets him. 'I should have known you'd wake up when we wanted to go to sleep. You're going to be just like your father.'

Harry opens his mouth as though to protest and then shuts it after a moment.

'See,' Lily smirks at me. 'He's not even denying it. He's probably proud to take after his dad.'

She kisses me softly and when we part, my eyes are not on her. They are on him. It is the first time I have kissed her while my mind is on something else; she's alright about this. He's mine after all. I feel it now.


End file.
